Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru

by Tanya Maria Golash-Boza

Overview

Yo Soy Negro is the first book in English—in fact, the first book in any language in more than two decades—to address what it means to be black in Peru. Based on extensive ethnographic work in the country and informed by more than eighty interviews with Peruvians of African descent, this groundbreaking study explains how ideas of race, color, and mestizaje in Peru differ greatly from those held in other Latin American nations.

The conclusion that Tanya Maria Golash-Boza draws from her rigorous inquiry is that Peruvians of African descent give meaning to blackness without always referencing Africa, slavery, or black cultural forms. This represents a significant counterpoint to diaspora scholarship that points to the importance of slavery in defining blackness in Latin America as well as studies that place cultural and class differences at the center of racial discourses in the region.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813044491
Publisher:	University Press of Florida
Publication date:	10/15/2012
Series:	New World Diasporas
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	246
Sales rank:	849,452
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, assistant professor of sociology and American studies at the University of Kansas, is the author of Immigration Nation?

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

1 Black, but Not African 28

2 Locating Black Peruvians in Latin America 59

3 Race and Color Labels in Peru 89

4 Diasporic Discourses and Local Blackness Compared 114

5 Black Is Beautiful or White Is Right? 143

6 The Politics of Difference in Peru 170

Epilogue 201

Glossary 207

Notes 211

Bibliography 215

Index 227